MKE Week 9 – The Master Key and Flowers

This week I have been thinking about the Master Key.  Well, you may say, that’s obvious.  But maybe not so obvious to some.  I heard someone say “Master Keys” and another suggested “The 12 Master Keys” as a title for something I am writing.

the master key

By definition, there is just one Master Key – one key that opens all the doors.  According to my trusty Google definition feature:

Master Key:  a key that opens several locks, each of which also has its own key.  As in: “the custodian has the master key to all the classrooms.”

There only needs to be ONE key.  Kind of like the Lord of the Rings “One ring to rule them all.”  It is just one thing, one key to thinking that makes all the difference.  In Part 9 of the Master Key System, Haanel shares that key with us:

What shall we think?  If we know this we shall have found the proper mechanism of attachment which will relate us to “Whatsoever things we desire.”  This mechanism may seem very simple when I give it to you, but read on; you will find that it is in reality the “Master Key,” the “Aladdin’s Lamp,” if you please; you will find that it is the foundation, the imperative condition, the absolute law of well-doing, which means well-doing.  Charles Haanel 9:5 The Master Key System

Well, that’s a bold statement!  I will leave it for you to “read on” for the rest of the key.

flowers

If you are already a Master Key student, you know about the exercises at the end of each lesson, or part.  Well, this week the exercise is to visualize a plant, a flower; to bring it from the unseen into the seen.  We are told to plant the seed, see it grow from a seed to a flower.

This reminds me of a quote:

The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.  Ralph Waldo Emerson

Why do this exercise?  Here’s what Haanel says about that:

When you are enabled to make your vision clear and complete you will be enabled to enter into the spirit of a thing; it will become very real to you; you will be learning to concentrate and the process is the same, whether you are concentrating on health, a favourite flower, an ideal, a complicated business proposition or any other problem of life.

Every success has been accomplish by persistent concentration upon the object in view.  Charles Haanel 9:33-34 The Master Key System

Now I want to share with you my own experience with this exercise.  I chose a sunflower.  I find them a cheerful and optimistic flower, always facing the sun, looking like a sun in fact.

I sat quietly and imagined that sunflower seed, planted in the fertile soil, warmed by the sun, nourished by the water.  I imagined the seed cracking open, the root system going downward, the flower shoot stretching upward.  I could see it breaking free from the soil, climbing ever upward, until the flower grows on this strong, tall stalk.  It was a simple yet effective exercise in concentration, imagination, and visualization.

Then I took it one step further.  One thing I have added to my DMP (Definite Major Purpose) is to write a book, which I have started to do.  So I transposed the visualization of writing the book over the developing sunflower.  The idea of the book was the seed germinating, with roots and shoots as ideas came to me.  Now the stalk is growing and growing as I write more.  As the story gels, the flower forms, and it is beautiful!  Then I got a flash of brilliance!  You know all those seeds that sunflowers make?  Those would be the readers, and each of them could plant their seed which would become their own story!  Amazing!  The goal of my book?  To inspire others to live their own Hero’s Journey!

Guess which flowers I will be planting this spring?